Thursday, February 01, 2007

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen

As my regular readers have likely noticed, I've been puzzling over ecology and commerce lately. These subjects have gotten the wheels turning over changing systems and all of their changeable parts.Every individual is the expression of a species, and every species is the expression its greater ecology. In a very similar fashion, businesses are recursive functions of their respective markets and regulatory environments. The system is a moving target, continually recomposing the parts that compose it. In recent weeks, I've found insight on these concerns in several books and in conversations with friends, famliy, coworkers, and veritable strangers. I've seen new truth in the old chestnut that ecology and economy describe two pieces of the same whole. I believe that ethics is curiously absent from that maxim and I'm beginning to wonder if education may be equally so.As I continue to try to explore connections and the domino forces that enact, create, and destroy those connections, I find it necessary to evolve this blog. The most obvious changes to those who have been here before are the new appearance and the new name. The URL will remain the same. It will be 20% more insightful, while only 5% more pretentious*.Less obvious changes are those that continually occur in my head and in the world we share- a world of nature, art, culture, commerce, and connection. I aim to delve into all of these subjects in greater detail as The Influence Machine adapts to its environment and strives to adapt its environment.As always, I welcome questions, comments, rants, and if you feel the need, verbal abuse over what I write. Book, movie, and music recommendations may be better-received than abuse. Without further ado, The Influence Machine.

*The author is setting target metrics for the gradual phasing-out of pretense.

Jez,An apt question. I suppose I could retreat to Hamlet's obervation to R and G, that "for there is nothingeither good or bad, but thinking makes it so", but this seems like a cop-out here.In the over-use of such a sentiment, I see the efforts of the analyst and the critic reaching their limits. My intent is to use and experience influence as a positive creative force. Or, perhaps more correctly, I see such influences as having great potential for good.

We write under the assumption that what we have to say is important to someone else. Otherwise, we would simply think and be content. This is the dusty window on my world, where I aim to influence and to be influenced through words.